1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink refilling assembly or ink refilling adapter for refilling ink into an ink cartridge installed in ink jet printers.
2. Prior Art
A variety of ink cartridges have been developed for printers which use liquid ink for printing, such as ink jet printers. Some ink cartridges are disposed once ink contained in the cartridges has been depleted, and other ink cartridges may be refilled with ink when ink contained in the cartridges has been depleted.
Typically, a refillable ink cartridge has an inlet which is closed by a plug. A syringe with a needle-like injector may be used to transport ink from a separate ink container into the refillable ink cartridge through the inlet after the plug has been removed. A separate ink container may include an injection nozzle which is attached to the container so that ink can be directly supplied from the container to the refillable ink cartridge.
These prior art ink refilling injectors suffer from some problems. For instance, if the cartridge is transparent, the amount of the ink refilled therein can be observed and, therefore, the ink refilling can be stopped when the cartridge is filled with a proper amount of ink. However, such observation is impossible with a non-transparent ink cartridge. In addition, even though the cartridge is transparent, if the cartridge includes inside thereof an ink absorption material such as cotton or sponge, it is not easy to know the amount of ink refilled. Furthermore, depending upon the condition of the ink absorption material after the ink inside the cartridge has been completely depleted, the amount of ink to be absorbed by the ink absorption material varies. As a result, ink occasionally overflows out of the cartridge and sometimes the ink is not refilled completely.